Social Issue Reading Response

           The social issue I care about is girls insecurities or self esteem. I feel like shows and magazines make girls feel like they have to look a certain way. 

There is a show called "Toddlers and Tiaras" and I think that show is so sad. It's about children who are put in beauty pageants and are transformed to look a certain way so they can win and get the biggest prize. Pageants started in 1921 with the first Ms America beauty pageant, but now beauty pageants start with kids at the age of 4. Parents allow stylist to pound make-up on their children at this age. They spray tan their whole body's and put on fake eyelashes. They get their hair done with extensions and even put in fake teeth. They do all this to compete with other four year olds to see who is the prettiest. The judges cant even see the real child underneath all that FAKE people put on. The sad part is that kids actually enjoy this, they think its fun to change their complete look and to say things that they normally wouldn't say. This is an example of how girls are encouraged to change their appearance thus leading to hate how they look and want to change.

        I once had a talk with my friends and my assistant principal. We all sat down in a circle and he asked us "When do girls realize that they are on top or that they are the leaders?" We all looked at each other unsure what to answer. We all came up with different  ideas of why we are in charge and lead. We mentioned how we are all leaders and how we do make most decisions but that the male minds make us feel like we shouldn't be leaders, we care too much of what men think so we don't take as much control as we should. We try to adjust ourselves to make us how they want to see us because we want to have that attention they give to girls that look like and act like the ones they see on t.v. or in magazines. I said that i partly blamed the Disney Princesses. I know it's just a children's movie but thats the problem. Children grow up watching these movies and look at the princesses as mentors. They want to be as elegant and pretty as they are. They want their prince to show up to their house and treat them as they do to princesses. What people don't notice, is that the princesses are just as bad as the contestants in beauty pageants. They are skinny beyond possible and want to have a perfect ending. But thats not how life works. You don't get a happy ending all the time. Every things not perfect for a reason, and girls hate the way they look and try to change because they think the princesses lives are that example, when they aren't. I think this is why girls are so insecure about their body's and their personalities.

Links:

1. http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=S44-4241-0-3678&artno=0000318350&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=body%20image&title=Little%20Girls%20or%20Little%20Women%3F%20The%20Disney%20Princess%20Effect&res=Y&ren=N&gov=N&lnk=N&ic=N

2. http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/toddlers-tiaras